


One Rejection

by Dassandre



Series: What the Water Can Carry [4]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst, Being A Parent, Disembowelment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gore, M/M, Prompt Fill, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 14:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19725136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: “No.  It’s worse than that.  She … Mir ... ”  Q choked on the words, convinced that giving voice to them would make it all so much more horrible, that James would believe ... but he found he couldn’t stop himself.  “She’s … she’s afraid of me!”





	One Rejection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts).



> For my muses and friends ...
> 
> This piece fills two squares on the 007 Fest Angst Prompt Table: Rejection and Disembowelment.
> 
> I told a friend I'd manage to write an angsty story about disembowelment in which no one died or was critically injured. This is what I came up with.

James entered the sitting room, took one look at Q with his head cradled in his hands, and detoured for the liquor cart where he poured two fingers of whisky into three separate glasses. He tapped Q on the forearm with one of them.

Q looked up, and James handed him the glass. “Pop it back.” Q did as he was bid, coughing only a little at the burn in his throat, and put the empty glass next to the gore-coated knife atop the newspaper-covered coffee table. 

“ _ Sip _ this one.” Q took the second and sipped dutifully as James sat down on the sofa next to him with his back against the arm. 

“How is she?” Q asked at length, not looking at James.

“Clean and asleep, finally.” James swallowed a mouthful of his own whisky. “Though I imagine you heard everything through the monitor.”

Q nodded but didn’t speak. He kept his eyes fixed on the glass he held between his knees. 

“Talk to me, Remy. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’d think it’d be obvious,” Q scoffed, gesturing at the carnage in front of him.

“I normally have a pretty solid grasp on how your mind works, but we’re neither of us experts at  _ this _ . Not going down that road without a map, love.”

“I’m a shite father, all right?!” Q snapped, slamming his glass on the table hard enough James was grateful it didn’t shatter. Remy jumped up from the sofa and gestured at the corridor leading deeper into the flat to the bedrooms. “I’ve traumatised our child, and now she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Remy.”

“No. It’s worse than that. She … Mir ... ” Q choked on the words, convinced that giving voice to them would make it all so much more horrible, that James would believe ... but he found he couldn’t stop himself. “She’s … she’s  _ afraid _ of me!”

James’ eyebrows shot up at the declaration. “How can you even think that? Miranda adores you, Q. You’re her Papa.”

“You saw … when you came home tonight … you  _ saw _ …” Q was pacing now, hands alternately flapping and tearing at his hair. On the edge of distraught.

James had never seen Q at such loose ends, not even during The Debacle in Dubai when a joint mission between MI6 and the German BND had gone completely pear-shaped due to compromised source intelligence. James had watched alongside Mallory and Tanner from the back of Q-Branch whilst Q and his team scrambled to put things right again. Though two agents died, Q had managed to guide the remaining three along with their two human assets and the hard drives out of the trap they’d walked into without even once raising his voice. 

But this was their daughter

This was different.

It was family and the rules and reactions of work  _ so _ did not apply. 

Though the learning curve wasn’t as steep at 18 months as it had been in the first three of Miranda’s young life, James and Remy still regularly questioned whether or not they were good fathers. Fit parents. After all, what business did a licensed serial killer with trust issues and a computer geek with a penchant for using technology to kill dozens from half a world away have in raising a child?

But Q’s reaction to this situation was so much more than those generalised fears. James found a relatively clean spot on the table for his glass -- flicking off a bit of the guts that clung to his finger in the process -- crossed the room, grabbed Q by the wrist when he paced by, and pulled him into his arms, holding him close.

Remy didn’t resist. He dropped his head to James’ shoulder, clutched at his back, and mumbled … something. 

“Say again?” James asked for Q had spoken directly into his jumper.

“She’s forsaken me.” 

The three words, so very Q and only slightly less muffled than before, were so laden with grief James’ heart caught in his chest.

_ Oh, Remy. _

James didn’t immediately correct him, however. Remy was wrong,  _ terribly _ wrong, but James needed to choose his words carefully because he could completely see why Q felt their daughter had rejected him.

It had been an absolute disaster, the situation James had walked in on upon returning to the flat that evening. Mir had been sat in her cosy chair next to the coffee table, screaming so loudly that James was immediately thankful for the soundproofing that had been installed when Q took possession of the flat years ago. Q was knelt in front of their daughter, pleading with her to calm, his own face a twisted reflection of the anguish and despair James heard in his daughter’s cries.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mir. I didn’t think. I thought that … I’m sorry, love. Please --”

Mir had been resisting each attempt her Papa made to pick her up and cuddle her close to comfort her, but the moment she spotted her Da standing in the entryway, she levered herself off her low chair and toddled awkwardly, yet desperately, toward James who caught her up in his arms despite the gore that coated her -- and the plush toy she clutched in her hand -- from head to foot.

“Remy?” James had asked, completely bewildered. He’d been running late, urged Q to start without him, but this was so not the scene he had envisioned for the evening. Oh, the pumpkin they had picked up at the shops to carve for Halloween was sat in the centre of the coffee table as expected, eyes and nose hewn, fibrous guts and seeds splattered on and around the table, but something had clearly gone wrong.

“It was fine. Everything was fine,” Q had explained desperately. “We were having a good time -- even with the guts getting everywhere -- but then I fucked up.”

“How?” He couldn’t imagine  _ what _ Remy could have done to cause  _ this _ to happen.

Q pointed from the disembowelled pumpkin on the table to the toy in Mir’s hand. Her new favourite: Gordy. A plush pumpkin with chubby arms and legs and a happy countenance given to her by Alec just the week before. “I said, ‘It looks just like Gordy, doesn’t it?’”

Christ. Yeah. That would do it.

Mir was exceptionally bright for her age, passing most of her milestones weeks before what was typical for each marker, so it stood to reason she’d make a connection between the gutted pumpkin on the table and her beloved toy.

Looking at the chaos playing out in the room -- distraught child, distressed husband, a spilt glass of wine on the carpet, gourd guts splattered everywhere -- James hadn’t thought it could get any worse.

Until it did.

Q, in an attempt to help soothe their daughter, placed his hand on Mir’s back.

She flinched.

Screamed louder.

And clung ever more tightly to James.

Remy’s face fell. He pressed his hand to his mouth and took a step back from the pair.

James knew his husband well enough to know he could not ease Q’s pain at that moment, but he pressed a kiss to his temple -- avoiding the pumpkin seeds that clung to his curls just above -- and said, “I’ll get her cleaned up. See if I can’t put her down. Then I’ll be back.”

It had taken nearly an hour for James to bathe and calm Miranda, the goo was even stuck in her elbow and knee creases, but she had so exhausted herself with crying that once she settled enough to lie down, it was but a few moments before she was sound asleep.

“She didn’t reject you, Remy,” he said into Q’s hair, running his hands up and down Q’s back. “She was distraught and you startled her. Mir doesn’t hate you, nor is she afraid of you. You’re the first person she wants to see when she wakes up in the morning and the last before she goes to bed at night. Her face lights up when you walk into the room. You’re the only one who can get her to eat her peas, and her first word definitely wasn’t ‘Dada.’ She  _ loves _ you.”

“I made such a hash of it. Scared her. I didn’t mean to, James. I  _ didn’t _ .” His jumper still caught Q’s words but they sounded less distressed than before. 

“Of course you didn’t mean to scare her. It wasn’t your smoothest move, love, but it wasn’t malicious. Odds are, when she wakes up, she won’t remember any of this … provided we clean up the evidence.”

Q snorted in response.

Good. The storm was passing. 

“Call in an after-action team?” Q suggested.

“I think Jameson’s in town. Her people are quite skilled at gory cleanup.”

Remy finally turned his head and looked at James. His eyes were rimmed with red but not watery. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I? Can help you and the others topple fascist dictators bent on securing power through biological weapons or by destabilising currencies, but I can’t seem to manage ... ” he gestured at the room at large, “... that.”

“No, love. Never an idiot.” James pushed back Remy’s rumpled fringe and cupped his face in one hand. “Just a father who loves his daughter to distraction and would rather cut off his own arm than ever hurt her. A feeling I know all too well.”

“We’re both a bit shite at this, aren’t we?”

“We are … but no more than any other parents, or so John’s always reminding me.” James had shared more than one fatherly fuck-up story with his brother-in-law over the last year and a half. Though the man had only a year more experience than he and Q, James found Watson’s advice both humorous and helpful. It had always gone a long way in making him feel not like a complete failure as a parent. 

He’d urge Remy to share this one with John, too.

“Are we doing right by her?” Q asked after James pressed a lingering kiss to his lips.

James considered the question. It wasn’t one to answer impulsively. “I think so. We’re certainly doing the best we can.”

Q hummed in response. “Care to help me clean up some gourd gore?”

“No.” Q huffed in response and stepped out of the circle of James’ arms.  _ Petulant wanker _ , James thought, fondly. “But I will make dinner whilst you tend to the mess.”

“Carbonara?” Remy asked with a suddenly winsome smile.

“Carbonara,” James agreed and turned for the kitchen whilst Q began gathering as much of the pumpkin guts as he could with the newspaper.

But James turned when Remy called out his name. Behind his spectacles, Q’s green eyes were wide with renewed concern. His mind, too full with the events of the evening, was taking him back down the dark path. He clutched soggy paper in his hands.

“You … you’re sure she still loves me?”

James let his eyes roam the face and form of the man who had so utterly changed his life -- given him more than he’d ever imagined possible for himself -- and smiled.

“How could she not? You’re rather impossible ...  _ not _ to love.”

Q’s bark of laughter was music to James’ ears. “You’re such an arse.”

“Which you twigged to the first time you met me,” he called over his shoulder, suddenly confident that this spot of emotional torture had been put to rest.

What the next one would bring to The Quartermaster and the former Double-O, only time would tell.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr


End file.
